linux/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt, branch v3.14

Merge branch 'core-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

2014-01-31T16:59:46Z

Pull core debug changes from Ingo Molnar: "This contains mostly kernel debugging related updates: - make hung_task detection more configurable to distros - add final bits for x86 UV NMI debugging, with related KGDB changes - update the mailing-list of MAINTAINERS entries I'm involved with" * 'core-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: hung_task: Display every hung task warning sysctl: Add neg_one as a standard constraint x86/uv/nmi, kgdb/kdb: Fix UV NMI handler when KDB not configured x86/uv/nmi: Fix Sparse warnings kgdb/kdb: Fix no KDB config problem MAINTAINERS: Restore "L: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" entries

hung_task: Display every hung task warning

2014-01-25T11:13:33Z

When khungtaskd detects hung tasks, it prints out backtraces from a number of those tasks. Limiting the number of backtraces being printed out can result in the user not seeing the information necessary to debug the issue. The hung_task_warnings sysctl controls this feature. This patch makes it possible for hung_task_warnings to accept a special value to print an unlimited number of backtraces when khungtaskd detects hung tasks. The special value is -1. To use this value it is necessary to change types from ulong to int. Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Acked-by: David Rientjes Cc: oleg@redhat.com Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1390239253-24030-3-git-send-email-atomlin@redhat.com [ Build warning fix. ] Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

kexec: add sysctl to disable kexec_load

2014-01-24T00:37:03Z

For general-purpose (i.e. distro) kernel builds it makes sense to build with CONFIG_KEXEC to allow end users to choose what kind of things they want to do with kexec. However, in the face of trying to lock down a system with such a kernel, there needs to be a way to disable kexec_load (much like module loading can be disabled). Without this, it is too easy for the root user to modify kernel memory even when CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM and modules_disabled are set. With this change, it is still possible to load an image for use later, then disable kexec_load so the image (or lack of image) can't be altered. The intention is for using this in environments where "perfect" enforcement is hard. Without a verified boot, along with verified modules, and along with verified kexec, this is trying to give a system a better chance to defend itself (or at least grow the window of discoverability) against attack in the face of a privilege escalation. In my mind, I consider several boot scenarios: 1) Verified boot of read-only verified root fs loading fd-based verification of kexec images. 2) Secure boot of writable root fs loading signed kexec images. 3) Regular boot loading kexec (e.g. kcrash) image early and locking it. 4) Regular boot with no control of kexec image at all. 1 and 2 don't exist yet, but will soon once the verified kexec series has landed. 4 is the state of things now. The gap between 2 and 4 is too large, so this change creates scenario 3, a middle-ground above 4 when 2 and 1 are not possible for a system. Signed-off-by: Kees Cook Acked-by: Rik van Riel Cc: Vivek Goyal Cc: Eric Biederman Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

sched/numa: Drop sysctl_numa_balancing_settle_count sysctl

2013-12-17T14:24:38Z

commit 887c290e (sched/numa: Decide whether to favour task or group weights based on swap candidate relationships) drop the check against sysctl_numa_balancing_settle_count, this patch remove the sysctl. Signed-off-by: Wanpeng Li Acked-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Acked-by: David Rientjes Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Andrew Morton Cc: Naoya Horiguchi Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1386833006-6600-1-git-send-email-liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

vsprintf: check real user/group id for %pK

2013-11-13T03:09:14Z

Some setuid binaries will allow reading of files which have read permission by the real user id. This is problematic with files which use %pK because the file access permission is checked at open() time, but the kptr_restrict setting is checked at read() time. If a setuid binary opens a %pK file as an unprivileged user, and then elevates permissions before reading the file, then kernel pointer values may be leaked. This happens for example with the setuid pppd application on Ubuntu 12.04: $ head -1 /proc/kallsyms 00000000 T startup_32 $ pppd file /proc/kallsyms pppd: In file /proc/kallsyms: unrecognized option 'c1000000' This will only leak the pointer value from the first line, but other setuid binaries may leak more information. Fix this by adding a check that in addition to the current process having CAP_SYSLOG, that effective user and group ids are equal to the real ids. If a setuid binary reads the contents of a file which uses %pK then the pointer values will be printed as NULL if the real user is unprivileged. Update the sysctl documentation to reflect the changes, and also correct the documentation to state the kptr_restrict=0 is the default. This is a only temporary solution to the issue. The correct solution is to do the permission check at open() time on files, and to replace %pK with a function which checks the open() time permission. %pK uses in printk should be removed since no sane permission check can be done, and instead protected by using dmesg_restrict. Signed-off-by: Ryan Mallon Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Alexander Viro Cc: Joe Perches Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

sched/numa: Skip some page migrations after a shared fault

2013-10-09T12:48:21Z

Shared faults can lead to lots of unnecessary page migrations, slowing down the system, and causing private faults to hit the per-pgdat migration ratelimit. This patch adds sysctl numa_balancing_migrate_deferred, which specifies how many shared page migrations to skip unconditionally, after each page migration that is skipped because it is a shared fault. This reduces the number of page migrations back and forth in shared fault situations. It also gives a strong preference to the tasks that are already running where most of the memory is, and to moving the other tasks to near the memory. Testing this with a much higher scan rate than the default still seems to result in fewer page migrations than before. Memory seems to be somewhat better consolidated than previously, with multi-instance specjbb runs on a 4 node system. Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Srikar Dronamraju Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-62-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Remove the numa_balancing_scan_period_reset sysctl

2013-10-09T12:48:18Z

With scan rate adaptions based on whether the workload has properly converged or not there should be no need for the scan period reset hammer. Get rid of it. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Srikar Dronamraju Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-60-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Favour moving tasks towards the preferred node

2013-10-09T10:40:26Z

This patch favours moving tasks towards NUMA node that recorded a higher number of NUMA faults during active load balancing. Ideally this is self-reinforcing as the longer the task runs on that node, the more faults it should incur causing task_numa_placement to keep the task running on that node. In reality a big weakness is that the nodes CPUs can be overloaded and it would be more efficient to queue tasks on an idle node and migrate to the new node. This would require additional smarts in the balancer so for now the balancer will simply prefer to place the task on the preferred node for a PTE scans which is controlled by the numa_balancing_settle_count sysctl. Once the settle_count number of scans has complete the schedule is free to place the task on an alternative node if the load is imbalanced. [srikar@linux.vnet.ibm.com: Fixed statistics] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Srikar Dronamraju [ Tunable and use higher faults instead of preferred. ] Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-23-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Set the scan rate proportional to the memory usage of the task being scanned

2013-10-09T10:40:20Z

The NUMA PTE scan rate is controlled with a combination of the numa_balancing_scan_period_min, numa_balancing_scan_period_max and numa_balancing_scan_size. This scan rate is independent of the size of the task and as an aside it is further complicated by the fact that numa_balancing_scan_size controls how many pages are marked pte_numa and not how much virtual memory is scanned. In combination, it is almost impossible to meaningfully tune the min and max scan periods and reasoning about performance is complex when the time to complete a full scan is is partially a function of the tasks memory size. This patch alters the semantic of the min and max tunables to be about tuning the length time it takes to complete a scan of a tasks occupied virtual address space. Conceptually this is a lot easier to understand. There is a "sanity" check to ensure the scan rate is never extremely fast based on the amount of virtual memory that should be scanned in a second. The default of 2.5G seems arbitrary but it is to have the maximum scan rate after the patch roughly match the maximum scan rate before the patch was applied. On a similar note, numa_scan_period is in milliseconds and not jiffies. Properly placed pages slow the scanning rate but adding 10 jiffies to numa_scan_period means that the rate scanning slows depends on HZ which is confusing. Get rid of the jiffies_to_msec conversion and treat it as ms. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Srikar Dronamraju Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-18-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

mm: numa: Document automatic NUMA balancing sysctls

2013-10-09T10:39:20Z

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Srikar Dronamraju Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-3-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar